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Tag: Liturgy

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Liturgy

Why are Liturgical Rules Important?

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On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus called His would-be-disciples to a deeper, fuller conversion. To follow Christ is not merely external obedience, but a matching obedience of the heart….

On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus called His would-be-disciples to a deeper, fuller conversion. To follow Christ is not merely external obedience, but a matching obedience of the heart.

Our external piety and the motives of our heart should be directly connected. As the Catechism explains:

“Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before Him, does not aim first at outward works, ‘sackcloth and ashes,’ fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance” (No. 1430).

Jesus addressed this matter directly in His teaching on prayer, almsgiving and fasting: “Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 6:1, RSV).

For those who sincerely want to grow closer to Jesus, who are striving by grace to “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48), this can pose a sticky conundrum.

When we attend Mass, the most vivid occasion when we “practice our piety before men,” what do we do when the practices of people around us differ from what we believe is right? What should we do when few of the people around us are genuflecting, kneeling, bowing, crossing themselves or showing reverence to Our Lord in the tabernacle?

On the other hand, what should we do when the people around us seem to be going overboard in their piety, in ways that seem far too showy, extravagant or self-promoting?

In either situation, when expressing our piety in public requires being different from those around us, how can we be sure we’re doing it for God’s sake rather than as a statement to others?

Some, in the name of “freedom,” dismiss liturgical rules and rubrics as a straightjacket to spiritual expression. They protest: “It really doesn’t matter how you pray or what you do with your body; all that matters is uniting your heart with God. We should be free, and that means being spontaneous!”

But the devil laughs at such a notion, for in our striving to be “free” we find it nearly impossible to focus on God when the overpowering motive is to be different and separate from those around. Too often in these circumstances, the underlying motive is not to please others or even God, but to feed the ego of self.

How do we avoid this problem? Herein lies the beautiful freedom of the liturgy. In her wisdom, the Church insists that liturgical rules and rubrics free us from the tyranny of trying to please others or ourselves. The Church teaches in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal:

“The gestures and posture of the priest, the deacon, and the ministers, as well as those of the people, ought to contribute to making the entire celebration resplendent with beauty and noble simplicity, so that the true and full meaning of the different parts of the celebration is evident and the participation of all is fostered.Therefore, attention should be paid to what is determined by this General Instruction and the traditional practice of the Roman Rite and to what serves the common spiritual good of the People of God, rather than private inclination or arbitrary choice” (No. 42).

Consider: When is a railroad train the most “free”? When it remains on the tracks, where it can roam full-steam ahead within trustworthy limits.

And when are we most free to worship God without the inner conflict of mixed motives? When in willing obedience we simply worship within the guidelines of our loving mother, the Church. For then we can be confident that our Father who sees in secret will reward us (see Mt 6:4).

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Liturgy

How Are Readings Chosen For Mass?

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The cycle of readings at Mass throughout the year has been established by the Church; more specifically, with the Second Vatican Council’s reform of the Liturgy, and by the authority…

The cycle of readings at Mass throughout the year has been established by the Church; more specifically, with the Second Vatican Council’s reform of the Liturgy, and by the authority of the Pope, a new Roman Missal and Lectionary has been established. There are two cycles of readings: weekdays and Sundays (feast days).

The weekday readings are on a two-year cycle (I, II) except for Lent and Advent, when the readings are the same every year. The Sundays are on a three-year cycle (A, B, C), supposedly because during the time of Christ the Sabbath readings in the local synagogue were also on a three-year cycle, and in the Church we try to do what Jesus did.

Vatican II reforms introduced a much wider variety of readings for the Masses because of the Church’s desire that Catholics know a lot more of sacred Scripture.

Although the cycle of readings has been established by the Church, there is room for choice depending on the occasion. For instance, the readings for a funeral Mass on a weekday could be selected from Readings for a Funeral, and not necessarily the readings for that weekday; likewise with wedding Masses, etc.; and likewise for local celebrations of local saints. All of that is set forth clearly in the “Ordo,” an official guide for the daily celebration of the Liturgy available in every diocese. Usually there is a copy of the local Ordo in the sacristy of your Church.

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Liturgy

Critical Moments: How should Catholics pray before and after Mass?

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It happens every Sunday. Parishioners scurry into their pews moments before Mass begins. A few sneak in during the opening song or even the first reading, hoping that no one…

It happens every Sunday. Parishioners scurry into their pews moments before Mass begins.

A few sneak in during the opening song or even the first reading, hoping that no one will notice. After Communion, the church is noticeably emptier than it was only minutes before. Several members of the congregation have slipped out the door to hurry off to their next activity. Many others bolt to their cars after the final blessing or file into the parish hall for coffee, donuts and friendly conversation.

Catholics who neglect to arrive early at Mass and hesitate to stay late are missing out on critical moments they could be using to cultivate their spiritual lives and grow in their relationship with God. Taking a few minutes for silent prayer before and after Mass can help Massgoers focus their attention, prepare their hearts for worship, express their gratitude and carry their experience of God back into their daily lives.

Zeroing in on God

Human minds wander. At one moment, a person is devoutly focused on singing the praises of God in the Gloria. In the next, she is thinking about what she would like to have for lunch. These lapses in attention happen to everyone from time to time, but they can be minimized by designating a few minutes before Mass to quiet the mind and zero in on God.

Begin by simply greeting God and reciting a few familiar prayers — perhaps the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be — to direct the mind toward the divine. Set before the Lord anything that is troubling or burdensome, and surrender it to His all-powerful care. Examine your conscience and repent of any sins that might be weighing heavily upon it. Lift up family, friends and acquaintances to the Lord and place them in His loving protection. Let go of anything that might distract the mind from offering God full praise, devout prayer and reverent worship over the next 60 minutes.

Now that the mind is focused on God, it is time to prepare the heart to worship Him. Focus especially on what is about to happen in the Mass. Recall that the lector and deacon or priest will be reading from the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Remember that Jesus is going to be really present — body, blood, soul and divinity — in the Eucharist. Recollect that this Eucharistic Jesus will come in a highly intimate way to each and every person who receives Him in holy Communion during the next hour.

Most importantly, ask God for help. Ask Him for the attention and devotion necessary to pray and worship well during Mass. Ask Him for the grace to receive Him worthily in holy Communion. He will always respond graciously and powerfully to an open, longing, loving heart.

Moments of Thanksgiving

When Father says, “Go forth, the Mass is ended,” do not take that as a cue to dash out the church door as quickly as possible. Instead, when the closing hymn ends, remain in the pew for a few minutes to bask in the intimate presence of the Eucharistic Jesus and to thank God for the great gifts He has just provided in the Mass.

Express heartfelt gratitude for the opportunity to worship with the saints and angels; to hear God’s Word solemnly proclaimed; to witness the sacred moment of consecration when Jesus became truly present on the altar under the appearance of bread and wine; and to receive the Lord of heaven and earth in holy Communion.

Do not rush through these moments of thanksgiving. God has given His very Self to His people in this Mass; the least His people can do in return is give Him thanks.

Before returning to the activities and cares of daily life, spend a few moments placing these in God’s hands. Beg Him for a share of His overflowing love and the courage to spread it everywhere throughout the coming week. Ask Him for grace to avoid sin. Tell Him about difficulties at work or at home, and ask Him for solutions. Talk to Him about troubled relationships, and ask for His guidance toward reconciliation. Recall and obey the comforting command of 1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.”

Practical Tips

For many Catholics, taking time to pray before and after Mass requires some adjustment and effort, at least at first. The following suggestions might help:

1. Get up 15 minutes earlier on Sunday mornings or start getting ready for Mass 15 minutes earlier on Saturday evenings. Then, be ready to leave for Mass 15 minutes earlier than normal.

2. To avoid feeling rushed, do not schedule any activities until at least a half-hour after Mass.

3. Make a firm commitment. Spiritual growth requires discipline, but God rewards His people’s efforts thirtyfold, sixtyfold and even a hundredfold (see Mt 13:8).

4. Invite others to pray. Sharing a prayer commitment with family, friends and fellow parishioners provides necessary motivation and support.

5. Do not fret about distractions during prayer before and after Mass. Gently guide the mind back to prayer whenever it wanders.

Pope Paul VI once called the Mass “the most perfect form of prayer.” Indeed, during holy Mass, God deepens and broadens His intimacy with His people as He speaks His Word to their hearts and nourishes their souls with the Eucharist. Is it not fitting, then, that Catholics should prepare carefully and thoroughly for this tremendous encounter with God? And is it not fitting that Catholics should express their gratitude for such an encounter? By spending time with God in prayer during those critical moments before and after Mass, Catholics will better appreciate the great gift of this most perfect prayer and, more importantly, grow ever closer to the Giver.

Amy Troolin is a freelance writer from Minnesota. She holds a master’s degree in theology and Christian ministry from Franciscan University of Steubenville.

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Advent

The Liturgical Love Words of Advent

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“Advent” does not mean “expectation” as some may think. It is a translation of the Greek word parousia, which means “presence” or, more accurately, “arrival” — that is, the beginning…

“Advent” does not mean “expectation” as some may think. It is a translation of the Greek word parousia, which means “presence” or, more accurately, “arrival” — that is, the beginning of a presence. In antiquity the word was a technical term for the presence of a king or ruler, and also of the god being worshipped, who bestows his parousia upon his devotees for a time. “Advent,” then, means a presence begun, the presence being that of God. — From “Dogma and Preaching,” by Pope Benedict XVI

Like many Catholics, I have been queried more than once by evangelical friends wondering why Catholics put so much stock in “ritualistic” things not explicitly spelled out in Scripture — things like Advent and its purple vestments; the candles marking the weeks; the O Antiphons, whose beautiful images so intensify our longing, even as they paradoxically deepen our sense of assured contentment.

“Jesus came once for all; He doesn’t keep coming,” one such friend reminded me. “Christmas is a great season, but why do you need a whole advance season, too? What’s the point?”

“But, surely, Jesus does keep coming to us, no matter where we are in our lives,” I answered. I reminded her of where she had been a year earlier, and the weighty concerns that had lain on her heart — and of the difficult but beautiful Advent my own family had endured a few years previous, at the bedside of a dying brother. “Christ is constant,” I said, “but we are not; our lives are not. We can get so caught up in things, in working, paying bills, making deadlines, tending to our families — and then, suddenly, we hear a prophet saying, ‘make straight a path in the wilderness,’ and it resets our priorities. It’s not just a story we’re meant to remember; it’s an action we are meant to undertake, so Christ can alight anew within us.”

Advent coaxes us out. We look up and there is a darker sky than before. The stars show more clearly, and they inspire us to hack through the things we have allowed to imprison us, so that we may walk a freer path and ponder what transpired in a lonely cave in Bethlehem, 2,000 years ago — what it meant then, and what it still means for all of us today.

Because it is monumental, this parousia is an encounter with Love as it had never before existed, and as it will never end.

And, yes, it has “already happened.” But if God is outside of time, and we know He is, then that momentous event “is happening” even as you read this. Right now, a star is shining brightly; a people are moving toward the places from whence they came; a young woman is great with child; wise men are lifting their eyes to heaven and wondering. The place of our own origin, from whence we came, beckons; it sends a flare as a guide! And the One who is All in All is moving toward us — in breathtaking humility — to show us the way back.

Like Mary, we are great with expectation, and wonder how can this be? Heaven reaching down in song and succor, to cradle the earth; Creator, come down among us, not to observe or direct, but to inhabit and serve. In his lowly, vulnerable birth, God comes as bridegroom, wedding himself to us — divinity to humanity — and shares with us that most intimate privilege of marriage, the joining of two into one, the mutual dependence, the mutual commitment — and nothing can ever be the same. But every marriage, even the best, needs constant attention, and recollection.

Call the repetitious seasons of Advent, then, year after year, a renewal of our wedding vows, complete with love words, as we make straight our paths, light our candles and beckon our beloved to us, again, with the sweet and beautiful pleadings of our Antiphons. You consent to come to us in all vulnerability; we consent to be vulnerable in return. This is forever.

Elizabeth Scalia is the award-winning author of Strange Gods, Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life and Little Sins Mean a Lot: Kicking Our Bad Habits Before They Kick You.

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Church Teaching

Introduction to Liturgical Theology

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From the Church’s earliest days, the way we worship God has been one of the most vital aspects of our common life. Given its centrality, then, even the way we…

From the Church’s earliest days, the way we worship God has been one of the most vital aspects of our common life. Given its centrality, then, even the way we celebrate liturgy is a topic of heated debate in the Church. And so the Church has grappled with such questions often throughout the centuries. It is, in fact, at the heart of the true meaning of the term orthodoxy. Ortho-doxa means “right praise” of God. How we praise God reflects what we believe about him.

The discipline known as “liturgical theology” deals with the importance of worship in the life of the Church. It can deal with seemingly mundane items such as the history of various liturgical items, such as a corporal (the cloth on which the paten and chalice are placed during the celebration of the Eucharist). But it also treats what is most essential in our worship, such as the meaning and importance of signs and symbols in liturgy, and the significance of liturgical participation of the laity and the related role of the clergy. Perhaps the most important question in liturgical theology is a rather simple one: What exactly constitutes liturgy?

Liturgy is a ritualistic act which, in some way, makes Christ present to his Church through signs and symbols, and which brings about the reality they symbolize. Thus the Church’s liturgy is often connected with the sacraments. But is not reducible to the sacraments alone. There are a variety of other types of liturgy: a separate, stand-alone Liturgy of the Word or the Liturgy of the Hours, for example. In all the Church’s liturgical forms, Christ is acting. His action comes through the whole Church, which is his body, gathered in his name.

As to how and why Christ is active in liturgy raises deeper theological questions treated within the discipline. For example, it has been argued by some that because bread isn’t important in some cultures, other elements might be presented as the Eucharistic species. Liturgical theology, in investigating such questions, will take into account the revelation of Christ and the tradition of the Church, and then apply it to the idea being considered. In the previous example, the discipline would say that bread is required because it is what Christ intended to be used in the Eucharist, since it is what he used when he instituted it, and what he asked be done in memory of him.

This helps us arrive at a very important aspect of the discipline. We often think of signs and symbols as given meaning only by us, as if we are the sole creators of the meaning of things. This thinking takes us to believe, then, that all signs and symbols are malleable and can change according to culture and what we think they mean. The problem with this idea is that it places the concepts of sign and symbol in a purely subjective approach without any real connection to history or tradition.

The task of liturgical theology, then, is to determine what is essential from the tradition and what is not, what is malleable and what isn’t. Even some things that are malleable — such as gestures in liturgy (as exemplified by different traditions according to different rites) — are not so easily changed because they express a deep meaning in the history of a particular ritual tradition and thereby need to be approached with care and reverence.

Words and gestures also are investigated by this discipline. They have a vital role to play not only in the liturgical life of the Church, but more specifically in her sacramental practice. Words matter, and following Jesus’ words are vital to ensuring that sacraments are validly and properly celebrated by the Church’s ministers.

If our starting point is truly that Christ is the main figure of the Church’s liturgy — the one who acts above all else — then we can begin to appreciate the need for unity in the use of words at the liturgy, especially the words Christ himself gave us. The words we use in liturgy matter because, in the end, it is Christ speaking them through the ministers of his Church. It is Christ who speaks the words of institution at each Mass, who baptizes, who confirms, who ordains, who absolves, who anoints, etc. This unity of the liturgical action becomes the unifying force for all Christian living. Our unified lived expression of faith feeds and grows from our unified liturgical life. As the ancient saying goes: lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). Thus liturgical theology really is an important linchpin for the Church’s unity.

In the end, our liturgical unity is expressive of the unity and universality of the Church, whereby it is Christ himself who speaks and acts through the ministers of the Church and all the members of his body gathered in his name. Our reverence toward the words, and our obedience to the Church’s instruction regarding liturgy, are rooted in respect and honor of Jesus Christ our Lord, the one who performs saving acts through ritual form.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read the full series here.

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Liturgy

What is the Mass?

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Catholics of a certain age will remember learning the Mass is “the unbloody sacrifice of the Cross.” While concise and accurate, this definition may require additional explanation. In such a…

Catholics of a certain age will remember learning the Mass is “the unbloody sacrifice of the Cross.” While concise and accurate, this definition may require additional explanation. In such a case, we may turn to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches: “The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s Passover … not merely the recollection of past events.… In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real” (Nos. 1362-63).

“Recollection” and “remembrance” are weak words in our modern vocabulary, because memories are what we put up with when the “real thing” is not at hand. But this is altogether the opposite meaning of these words in the Scripture and the liturgy. There, memory and recollection have immense power. At the first Passover, God told Moses, “This day will be a day of remembrance for you” (Ex 12:14). It is still so for Moses’ descendants today, and when they gather for their Passover meal, they relive the terror of a people in flight, and the relief of a nation saved. Likewise, when we gather for the Mass, Jesus’ words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” open a window onto eternity, and allow us to stand at the foot of the cross.

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